Potato, onion prices push up food inflation to 13.39 p.c.

The government on Thursday presented a more realistic picture of the price situation saying the inflation of food items shot up by 13.39 per cent during the week ended October 24 driven mainly by soaring prices of potato and onion.

A new system for presenting inflation data of primary articles and fuel on weekly basis, which has been introduced from today, says prices of potato have doubled during the one-year period ending October 24, 2009.

The prices of onion have also shot up by 50 per cent during the year, while pulses rose by 23.45 per cent. The inflation for primary articles, which also include non-food items, grew by 8.94 per cent.

This captures the price situation in a better way than the annual inflation of all the items, according to which the inflation was only 1.51 per cent for the week ended October 17.

The other items, which recorded over 10 per cent increase in prices are rice (12.19 per cent) and milk (10.3 per cent).

On the other hand, the non-food items, which include fibre, oil seeds and minerals, declined by 0.25 per cent. Also the index of fuel, power, light and lubricants decreased by 6.2 per cent.

However, as compared to the previous week, there was some easing of the prices with the index of primary articles, based on movement in wholesale prices, declining by 0.1 per cent.